Lessons from a Pre-schooler

Sometimes God teaches us a lesson that makes us stop and wonder, how have I never seen this before? This is one of those:

I work as a gymnastics coach. And one of my most memorable experiences was one class that I filled in that was a pre-school class. Pre-school gymnastics....oh what fun! So the night before I was supposed to fill in, I sat there and prayed for patience with this class and that it would go well, and that the kids would listen because no matter how many times you yell-

And it's there that I stopped. It was one of those moments where you groan and kind of put your head into your hands. You know? I am a pre-schooler! Coaching a class of them, well it could be crazy... They have an attention span of about ten seconds. And their listening skills aren't much better. Soon you start to sound like a broken record, "Katie, sit down. Ryder, stay in line. Don't do that Jenna. Katie, please sit down. Bobby, keep your hands to yourself. Katie, sit down...." The good mood you went into the class with, doesn't always come back out.

Like them, our attention span is about ten seconds compared to God's. We can't even pray for more than five minutes! And our listening skills are worse! He tries to get through to us over and over again. He's practically shouting down at us. It's amazing that God never gets tired of us! Thank goodness God has more patience with us than I do with a bunch of three and four year olds! But even when we are like those pre-schoolers and it takes forever for God to get through to us and we don't listen and we're just running around around crazy, God loves us even then.

One of my favorite parts of coaching is when a kid gets a new skill. Their eyes light up and their so excited. And they can't wait to show the world, well at least their mom and dads. They finally understand, they finally get it. And when they look to their parents and show them, they're just as excited, if not more so, than their kid.

I wonder if God is like that when we finally learn something that He's been trying to teach us. When we finally get it, when we finally understand. I can imagine God looking down and and His eyes shining with excitement. Being our proud Father. And He can't wait for us to share it with the world.

I know I'll never know everything about God. I'm not supposed to. That's where faith comes in. But we have to be ready and listening to what God does want us to learn.

And I'm so thankful that He's so patient with this pre-schooler.

*And since then, I regularly coach pre-school classes and I love them now!